On Being and Becoming
In his recent article, Dean Abbott posed the question, “To what degree, as artists and thinkers, do we use our crafts to respond to the political and cultural events of the day, and to what degree do we focus on unchanging truths?”
In many ways, this question is related to the more fundamental question of being and becoming, which is a question that plagued the early Greek philosophers. In Plato’s Cratylus, Socrates recounts the teaching of Heraclitus, who “is supposed to say that all things are in motion and nothing at rest; he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same river twice” (402a). According to Heraclitus, everything is continually in flux. We are creatures of time living in a temporal world and, consequently, there is no fixed place to stand. However, he concluded, there is one thing that is consistent: the process of change itself. Unfortunately, this still provides little grounding, because Heraclitus was a monist, believing everything exists in one plane of reality. If everything is truly in a constant state of becoming, we ought to ask Heraclitus, what is the grounding for this stable, ordering principle?
Heraclitus, the philosopher of becoming, was challenged by Parmenides, the philosopher of being. In opposition to Heraclitus, Parmenides was a rationalist who concluded that motion is irrational and, consequently, an illusion. This philosophy is best demonstrated by Zeno’s paradoxes, each of which present the same basic point. In the more well-known illustration, there is a race between Achilles and a tortoise. Because Achilles has a clear advantage, the tortoise is given a substantial head-start. Before Achilles can catch up to the tortoise, he must first run halfway from the starting place to the tortoise. Then, he must run half of the remaining distance, and so forth ad infinitum. With the spatial fractions dividing ever-further, Achilles will never reach the tortoise. In fact, he will never actually be able to move at all. This is the philosophy of being.
Even if we would never appear so preposterous as to claim either of these positions, most of us choose one of these camps in practice. We either live in the world of constant movement or in the world of changeless being, relating only with eternal realities. Those of us who identify with Heraclitus are typically most in-tune with the latest headlines. We’re constantly keeping up with the river and are moved along with its ceaseless flow. Those of us who identify with Parmenides recognize that there are timeless principles at play that shape our world, so we try to avoid getting swept up in the illusion that things are actually changing in any substantial way. We aren’t riled up by the headlines, but instead choose to dwell on theological, philosophical, and artistically beautiful realities.
There is, however, a third way: Plato. Plato believed that being and becoming are united in the human soul. As creatures of becoming, we are constantly changing amidst a world of change. As much as we might not like temporal entanglements, they are as much our home as the eternal and changeless, to which we are also related. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are real, eternal realities situated in the realm of being. Inasmuch as we recognize and embrace these ideal Forms, we too participate in changeless reality, which in turn shapes the manner with which we engage the temporal world.
So, what does all of this have to do with Dean’s question about our engagement with political affairs?
Ultimately, I argue that this dilemma is not solved through a binary decision, but through properly relating being and becoming. When we have a right understanding of the Good, we will play our roles in shaping the temporal world accordingly. If our understanding of the Good doesn’t lead us to make good choices, and to advocate for good policies, then how can we possibly claim to know the Good in any remotely meaningful sense? As the demon Screwtape advises Wormwood concerning his target, “Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones.” Any valid understanding of eternal realities will absolutely lead to engagement with the temporal. To argue otherwise is delusional pride.
However, we must get this relation correct, because the temporal is often a siren, luring us in with titillating journalism that calls us to wreck our eternal perspective on the shore of unprincipled tribalism and reactionaryism. Kierkegaard notes this phenomenon and its consequences well in one of his journals:
"The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control.”
It’s not difficult to argue that time has indeed served to disclose this fact. Of course there are noble journalists out there, but, as an industry, journalism is aimed at binding us to the temporal. It is aimed at making us political, but not intentionally, or reflectively political.
When was the last time you heard a presidential debate begin with the moderator asking about the candidates’ most basic understandings of goodness? No, they go straight into policies and superficial talking points without providing any foundational moral grounding. This is why we must pay close attention and read between the lines. It is so important that we resist the media’s desire to capture our minds, drowning us in the Heraclitan river. However, the answer is not to retreat into the motionless rationalism of Parmenides. Instead, we must find solid footing in the realm of being from which we can reach down into the river and offer a stabilizing hand to those who are floating downstream. When we act in truth, we may even find that the river itself changes direction. In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”
About the Author
Andrew Snyder holds a Ph.D. in theology with a dissertational focus on Søren Kierkegaard’s theology of self-formation. He is an adjunct professor of philosophy and religion, a contributing author to The Holy Spirit and the Reformation Legacy, the host of the Mythic Mind podcast, and the founder of the Mythic Mind Humanities Guild. You can follow him on Twitter @andrewnsnyder and subscribe to his personal Substack on The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien at Andrew N. Snyder
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